Regional utvikling og partnerskap: et komparativt blikk på norske og danske erfaringer

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Danish regional policy has changed dramatically. As of January 1991, all central government incentive schemes were terminated, and since then the main components of spatial economic policy have been a host of subnational initiatives and the European Structural Funds. Denmark would in other words seem to be an extreme example of more general European trends well-known in the literature, namely the shift away from national schemes towards regional and supra-national initiatives, and an enhanced position of subnational government based on increased involvement in European matters as envisaged in the ?Europe of the Regions? slogan. The aim of this chapter is to examine the transformation of regional policy in Denmark from the perspective of political decentralization and Europeanization in order to establish to what extent recent changes have increased the capacity of Danish regions to pursue their own agendas with regard to economic development, and explore the organizational strategies pursued by varies tiers of government in this process of rapid and profound policy change. The text is divided into three parts. The following section provides a brief outline of the analytical framework, based primarily on contributions from traditions within policy analysis, network theory and the new institutionalism. The main body of the text examines the changing face of spatial economic policy in Denmark, dealing in turn with the development of policies and initiatives emanating from the national, European and regional levels respectively, and assessing their implications for the relative influence of the different levels of government involved. Finally the origins of what can be shown to be a considerable degree of decentralization are discussed, especially with regard to the possible role of the European and other tiers of government in the process.